


Commencements

by curi_o



Series: Pain for Jayne [17]
Category: Firefly
Genre: Content: Angst, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-28
Updated: 2006-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curi_o/pseuds/curi_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody had somebody now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commencements

**Author's Note:**

> Pain for Jayne prompt: With
> 
> _So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits.  
>  I hope you have found a friend.  
> Closing time.  
> Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end._
> 
> _— "Closing Time", Semisonic_
> 
>  _com·mence·ment_
>      n. A beginning; a start.

* * *

Everyone was with someone now. Mal had 'Nara; Kaylee had Simon; Zoe had Wash’s memory. Even the moonbrained girl’d found a body to hold her hand an’ kiss her in the night.

 _Well, good for her_ , Jayne thought bitterly, slamming the crate onto the floor.

Weren’t like he’d actually wanted her, anyway. Weren’t like he’d _sought_ her attention when she’d fixed it on him. He weren’t one to mess about with crazy little girls, that was for _gorram_ sure.

When she’d started watchin’ him more, it’d scared the hell out of him. Thought maybe she was fixin’ to start slicin’ on him again. Just ‘cause her brother said she was gettin’ better didn’t mean she weren’t a weapon, plain and simple.

Jayne knew that a weapon could be a friend truer than any, treated right. But he had no idea how to handle one shaped like a pretty girl, an’ he’d learned to be wary around unfamiliar weapons. So he’d kept his distance from the crazy after Miranda, not wantin’ her to start thinkin’ on revenging his actions long past.

But when he’d noticed the way she always seemed to be around when he was in the bay or the mess or fixin’ to go on a job, watchin’ him, he’d realized that stayin’ under the radar weren’t working no more. An’ when she’d started going on jobs with them, regular-like, sittin’ close to him in the mule, he’d been smart enough to think that there were probably dozens of ways she could kill him from that position, an’ she was probably remindin’ him of that fact.

It weren’t until she’d started talkin’ to him, showin’ up late at night when he was out of his bunk, alone in the mess or the bay, that he’d started wonderin’ if maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she weren’t tryin’ to remind him she could kill him with her brain. Maybe—Maybe she was tryin’ to be _close_ to him.

He weren’t sure that thought didn’t give him more of an uncomfortableness than her tryin’ to kill him. The very idea of himself bein’ _intimate_ with _Serenity_ ’s young albatross near set him off sexin’ for a good week. Weren’t just her bein’ so _gorram_ young, younger’n half his age, but she weren’t a normal girl, neither.

Girlfolk were s’posed to be soft’n warm’n steady ‘nough that nothin’ much would ruffle’em. They were meant for fun and makin’ a man feel safe-like for an hour or two, even if a body couldn’t trust ‘em. Girlfolk _weren’t_ meant to be trained assassins could take on a herd of Reavers and live, nor read a man’s mind and know his thoughts and feelings.

An’ he’d told the little witch just that. He’d told her weren’t no way he was gonna be inclined to start somethin’ led to sexin’ her, and they’d both be better off if’n she’d get that into her genius brain and leave him be. An’ she’d looked at him an’ laughed in her creepy crazy way a’fore she’d run off, cryin’. An’ he’d been satisfied, ‘cause that was exactly the kind of crazy he didn’t want in his life.

That had been three months ago. After that conversation, Mal and Simon had eased up on him a bit, like they knew what was going on an’ what he’d done about it an’ they were relieved. The women, though…

He’d complained to Kaylee ‘bout the environmental regs in his bunk more’n once in the last three months, ‘cause he was always suffocatin’ from the heat or freezin’ from the cold. Even though she’d told him every time that she’d done adjusted it, he’d started to think that maybe those adjustments weren’t as much to his benefit as he’d like.

An’ Zoe’d slipped up on two recent jobs, causin’ Jayne to take a bullet in his buttocks and another in his foot. Her apologies’d seemed kinda half-assed, to Jayne’s mind. Kinda like she weren’t sorry at all, he thought.

Now, Inara, she hadn’t never really treated Jayne with respect, but he’d noticed that when she went planetside with them, to bars or whatnot, she’d talk to the other whores there, the ones Jayne’d been studyin’ on. 

When he’d picked his company, the girls’d make him pay before servicin’ him. He’d been passin’ out in the beds of trim an awful lot lately, wakin’ up with a splittin’ headache and fully clothed.

At first he’d thought Nara’d just been makin’ tea-talk with other working girls, since she weren’t Companionin’ no more, on account of Mal; that the whores were finally getting smarter about making sure clients paid; that he was gettin’ older an’ his body weren’t handlin’ liquor the same way. 

When he chewed on it, though, he wondered if all them things he’d been noticin’ weren’t tied together, whether Nara’d been gettin’ friendly with the whores an’ they’d pulled some kind of deceitfulness on him.

He was starting to think the women were getting back at him for hurtin’ the girl. The girl herself’d been all manner of calm and quiet and polite ‘round him since he’d told her off that night. 

He’d found himself thinkin’ on her less like a kid an’ more like a woman, lately, too. She’d been through more’n most grown men in a lot less time, an’ he figured that was probably why she seemed so much older than her age, too, when she was in her right mind. 

That was pretty much all the time, these days. She seemed fair normal; leastways, as normal as any Alliance-trained genius reader assassin could be. He’d been thinkin’ maybe he ought to apologize to her for bein’ so harsh-soundin’ before. Maybe he could learn a little about how the girl-weapon worked.

 _Fat chance now_ , he thought, slamming another crate against the floor. The same day as he’d been thinkin’ he would finally have that talk with her, she’d come back to the ship with another woman in tow. They was holdin’ hands and gigglin’ back and forth. She hadn’t even looked Jayne on her way past him.

Later, Mal’d told him that they’d hired the new woman on as a new pilot, so River wouldn’t have to do double duty as both gun and getaway. (“Don’t know how I feel about havin’ so many female bodies on board. Get too many of ‘em together and they get kinda crazy-like, all at the same time. You’re lucky you don’t got one of ‘em sleepin’ in your bunk,” Mal’d confided to Jayne conspiratorially.) It turned out that River’n the new girl were sharin’ a bunk—and a bed.

The thought didn’t get him thinkin’ on sex the way it had when Inara’d brought that counselor on board. Made him all kinds of angry, when he thought on it. He was pretty sure he hated the new pilot, though he couldn’t say why. Was probably ‘cause they were gonna have one hell of a mess on their hands when the girl decided River was too much for her to handle.

After all, a body had to take special care of a weapon like River, an’ the new pilot weren’t near as good at the job as Jayne would be.


End file.
